Police: Woodlands man fatally shot wife, then turned gun on self

Investigators say pair were arguing, woman called relative to get child

Updated 7:18 pm, Thursday, September 24, 2015

Autopsy results on Thursday confirmed that a Woodlands woman died after being shot multiple times by her husband, who afterward used the gun to take his own life inside the couple's neatly kept red-brick home, Montgomery County sheriff's spokesman Brady Fitzgerald said.

Rachel Mt Joy, who kept her maiden name, and her husband, Billy Joe Wischnewsky, both 44, were both dead by the time sheriff's investigators responding to a 911 call arrived at their home Wednesday night at 211 N. Wynnoak Circle.

"We found their bodies in the same room in the front of the house," Fitzgerald said.

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According to investigators, the couple had been having heated arguments Wednesday and Mt Joy telephoned a relative to came over to pick up their young child, who lived there.

The relative saw no sign of anybody being physically harmed when the child was retrieved, Fitzgerald said.

Another relative then drove to the home a few minutes later, went inside and found the couple dead, he said.

"We do not know what the argument had been about," said Fitzgerald, who knew of no domestic disturbance calls to that address.

Wischnewsky, who sometimes used his wife's last name, had prior criminal convictions for drunken driving, burglary, robbery and marijuana possession.

Employees at Harley-Davidson in Conroe and The Woodlands, where the wife was a long-time sales employee, expressed shock and sorrow at the news of her death.

Authorities would say only that Mt Joy and Wischnewsky were parents of more than one child.

"Child protective services was notified, and the children are living with relatives," Fitzgerald said.

The Montgomery County Clerk's Office had no record of the husband or wife filing any papers to start divorce proceedings, but there were records of proceedings involving children from prior marriages for both of them.

"We cannot say what happened between them that last day, but we are sure about who fired the handgun that we found at the scene," said Fitzgerald, who said the case remains under investigation. "It's been very hard on all the family left behind."